


regal shadow

by cordsycords



Category: L.A. By Night (Web Series), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Crossover, For the TMA folks it's a statment fic set in season 1, Gen, Statement Fic, for LABN folks it's a weird take on Jasper's backstory, thecnically I guess, though knowledge of the other canon isn't really needed here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 11:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21337585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordsycords/pseuds/cordsycords
Summary: Case number 0131121. Statement of Jasper Heartwood, regarding a mirror he found in the tunnels under Los Angeles. Original statement given November 6th, 2013 to our sister organization, the Usher Foundation of the United States of America, and transferred to The Magnus Institute February 22nd, 2014. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 9





	regal shadow

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I know I have other things to write, but look at this shiny new toy I found.

[CLICK]

**ARCHIVIST**

Case number 0131121. Statement of Jasper Heartwood, regarding a mirror he found in the tunnels under Los Angeles. Original statement given November 6th, 2013 to our sister organization, the Usher Foundation of the United States of America, and transferred to The Magnus Institute February 22nd, 2014. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

Statement begins.

**ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)**

I’ve never been particularly good at sitting still.

Well, that’s not true. I can sit still. I could sit still for hours, providing there was a reason for it. There were days in college when I wouldn’t leave my room, so enamored I was in my work as a student that I felt no need to eat, or sleep, or interact. I’m incredibly fond of puzzles, you see, and I tend to lose myself when focusing on things that are attached to difficult answers. Perhaps sitting still is not the best way to describe it, perhaps it’s stagnation. Sitting still denotes a lack of activity, but stagnation is a lack of everything. Stagnation isn’t motion, it isn’t thought, or development. It’s just you, your entire life. Stopping.

It started with our move to Los Angeles. My girlfriend, Chloe Hudson, and I thought it might be a good idea for a new start. We met in our first year of college, we were young, but we stuck together until graduation. I graduated with a degree in architecture, her in English, though she wished to return to school for an additional degree in journalism. We didn’t dislike the idea of living in New York, necessarily, but moving felt like a good decision. Our way of growing up, perhaps.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a move that isn’t stressful, particularly one that involves moving your entire life across the country. We didn’t receive much assistance from either of our families. They weren’t exactly in love with the decision, but neither of us was very interested in what our parents thought of us. It was almost a year after we graduated when we finally left. Throughout that time we were both working. I was a low-paid intern, and she was a waitress. We both hated our jobs. It wasn’t a good time for us.

Our new place wasn’t large, and it wasn’t small either, though we had both lived in Manhattan all our lives so perhaps our perception of space had been skewed. It was a good place for us, within walking distance of Chloe’s new school. There was space in the living room for my desk, one of the only things I brought from New York. She’d study on the couch while I sat in the corner, going through my portfolio. We’d cook together in the evenings. We were becoming ourselves, again, putting the previous year behind us. It felt nice.

I never thought that finding a job would be the difficult part. I had graduated near the top of my class, the internship, however terrible it was, added good work experience to my resume. Perhaps it was naive of me to think that was enough, but when weeks became months, with no luck at all. We saved, sure, but with Chloe in school, we needed a steadier income, and the added stress was weighing on us.

Looking back now, I guess I was depressed. I stopped sending out resumes, stopped searching at all. My desk in the corner of our living room, old, antique, a proper architect’s desk, just sat there, a reminder of my failures. There were days I would just sit there, nothing to do, nothing to read, nothing to think, the walls of that apartment closing in on me. Some days it felt small, constricting, holding me there so I couldn’t leave, other days it felt so large that I couldn’t imagine how the world outside could even compare. Chloe was worried, I told her that I was fine, that I had just hit a bump, but she could always see through my bullshit. She always knew when I was lying. Eventually, her worry became more stifling than my anxiety. I could feel it all the time. Her pity. Every single day I woke up expecting her to end it all, to run away from me, from us. To go back home, back to where life was easier. It was impressive, in the end, how long we lasted. 

I started taking walks, mostly to get away from the apartment, but also to remove myself from her as well. If you look at my mood as a form of depression, then my daily excursions could have been seen as some sort of healing, but it wasn’t. I was still in the middle of the stagnation, I had just moved it somewhere else. If you know anything about Los Angeles, you’ll know that it’s not built for one to get anywhere without a vehicle. Sure, you can walk, but you won’t get anywhere you need to go. It was mindless, looking back I couldn’t describe what routes I took, or what I saw. Hours would go by without a thought, the only marks of my daily journeys being the tired ache in my legs and the light tan I had acquired on my pale skin. I would come home after Chloe did, and she would ask where I had been. I never had an answer for her, which drove her crazy, I knew, but she never pressed any further.

I soon decided that if this was what I was going to be doing then I might as well find a destination. Living in Manhattan, walking through the city, was what got me interested in architecture in the first place. Each building was a puzzle to me, thousands of pieces, beams, and bricks, and steel, coming together to form such beauty, while remaining structurally sound, and safe, the meeting of art and science. It fascinated me to no end, as a child, I could lose myself for days in the city I was raised. Perhaps I just needed to rediscover that fascination in my new surroundings. That’s how I found the tunnels.

It’s no secret that there are over eleven miles of tunnels hidden under the downtown area of the city. You can even go on public tours of them, but I desired a more personal experience of them. I’ve always been a researcher at heart. It took about a week to find the more secret entrances, places that people had found and posted anonymously online. I had no doubt that any of this was most likely illegal, but I couldn’t find myself to care about such things anymore. I marked about half a dozen such entrances around the city, and decided to go through each one over the next week or so.

The first one had been barricaded, unfortunately. The second, I couldn’t even find. The third was available to me but didn’t provide much in the way of interesting adventures. It seemed to be cut off from the major network of tunnels, and only provided me half a day’s worth of distraction.

The fourth location I had marked was in The Arts District of downtown L.A., about 10 miles south of where I’d eventually be found in the L.A. River. The entrance was well hidden, and I won’t give the exact location of it so that it may remain in use by future explorers like myself. It is no danger anymore. I checked.

These tunnels were different than the others I had been in before. They had no age to them, yet I could tell they were old, that they had been there longer than the other ones had. My first hypothesis for their existence had been for the use of criminal activity, but looking back I am sure that I was wrong. There was no logical reason for those tunnels to exist. They just did.

That first day, I was so sure that I got lost. No, I definitely did get lost. There was no reason to the labyrinth that I found myself in. While I would not describe myself as a navigator, I could still one direction from another, but those tunnels were disorienting to no end. At some points, I thought I had found my original path, only to discover another path, completely new, leading somewhere I had never been before. It didn’t help that my phone refused to work down there. I could barely tell the passage of time. I remember never feeling tired, or hungry. I should have at least been anxious over the fact that no one knew where I was, that if I actually was lost, it was quite unlikely that I would ever be found.

Somehow, that first day, I found my way out. It was six in the evening. I had spent seven hours in the tunnels. I went home, feeling more like myself than I had in months. It was invigorating.

I mentioned previously my fascination with puzzles, and this was a greater puzzle than I had ever faced before. It enthralled me in a way that I can only describe as madness. I wished to discover the secrets of those tunnels, how they were designed to be so entangled and disorienting, and what they lead to for those smart enough to decode their twisting passages. The next time I returned I went prepared, with paper and compass, a backpack filled with food, and a watch to mark the time.

I spent no less than weeks trying to put those tunnels to paper, only to have my work turn obsolete the next day I returned. It wasn’t even just the paths I was taking, but the dimensions of the tunnels themselves. Some days I would have to crouch to get anywhere, and on others, the ceiling towered so high into the dark not even the light from my flashlight could reach the top of the curved stone passageways. The tunnels grew to become a more hostile environment that I thought: giant pits carved into the floor, with drops so high that I could have seriously injured myself if I happened to fall into them. In some places, the air was so thin I could barely breathe. Occasionally I would walk through an archway into a new tunnel, only to hear the one behind me collapse. And still, I pushed on. I soon discovered that it didn’t matter which path I took, I would always return to the entrance at 6 pm sharp.

Chloe stopped asking where I went during the day. Perhaps she saw the change this discovery had made in me. Perhaps she thought I was back to my normal self. The labyrinth had taken up my entire life. Every waking moment was spent thinking of it. It’s hard to admit, but Chloe was barely a thought in my mind. 

About a month in, I stopped sleeping. I would sneak out of bed in the middle of the night and sit at my desk, pouring over the drawings I had made, trying to find a path to the center. I had no reason to believe there was a center, at that point, but the thought consumed me. I was smart about my nighttime activities, I knew when to get in and out of bed without disturbing Chloe, and luckily one of my desk drawers had a lock on it to hide my notes.

One night, I finally found it. The map to the center. So sure I was of my design that I didn’t even go back to bed, the intense euphoria of finally solving the riddle of the labyrinth taking over me. I left my normal supplies behind, only bringing my map with me to the site of the entrance of the labyrinth. Looking back, there had been no reason for me to believe that the map would have worked, but I did nonetheless.

In front of me, the labyrinth parted. My map was, wondrously, correct. Every twist and turn, every pitfall and collapsed ceiling marked down in perfect measure. I had forgotten my watch, so I could not tell how long I walked before I found its end. I don’t remember it being that far, but now there’s no way to tell.

The mirror was my prize, located in what I assumed was the heart of the maze. It was a small room, round with a dome-shaped roof. I had never seen anything like it in the labyrinth before. The mirror was propped on the wall, opposite the arching entrance. Its frame was made of dark wood, its intricately carved surface casting waves of shadow from the glare of my flashlight. The glass of its surface was shining and pristine, yet I could see no reflection of myself. In fact, it reflected no light at all.

This was my prize. A new puzzle for me to decode. I sat down, staring at the maddening thing. Its darkness was enthralling, the neverending pitch of black extending far past my vision. I don’t remember what made me touch the thing, but I couldn’t help myself. The glass was so cold. I barely touched my finger to it, yet the chill soon encompassed my hand, turning it numb. The entire room grew frigid all of a sudden, each breath I took expelling a small cloud of warmth from my mouth. Yet my finger did not stop, there was nothing solid to hold it back, it just kept going, swallowed by the dark. The glass still looked like it was there, yet my finger simply passed through it.

I pushed my entire hand in. The dark was like a fog, wrapping itself around me. The chill extended past my shoulder, and very soon I was shivering, alone in the dark room. At that moment I swear I felt something tug at the edge of my sweater, and I leaned in farther, until, without a second thought, I had fallen in, the darkness encompassing me completely.

I could not accurately describe what it was like within the mirror. I guess ‘floating’ is the closest word I can use, but even then you can still feel the water against your skin. Here, there wasn’t even that. It was nothing. No sound, no touch, no smell. No direction to lead me back into the labyrinth, no hope that I could turn a corner and return to its entrance, be back home by 6 pm. I am almost terrified to say that I did not panic, that I faced my end with a resigned dignity. I guess it made sense, at the time, that this is what everything had lead to, that the madness that had come over me had finally lead me to my own destruction. I closed my eyes, the darkness I found there no different from the darkness around me.

I woke up in the hospital twelve days later. They found my body in the L.A. River, Chloe told me, malnourished and far beyond dehydrated. It was a wonder I was alive, though I was not unmarked. The mirror had changed me. The cruel fluorescent light of the hospital was burning. I could not bear to look at it. The light of the day did not do me any better. The hospital staff couldn’t deal with my terrified shrieking, I spent most of my days asleep until I learned to stop complaining. I learned to keep quiet, to stow my pain as my skin slowly sizzled underneath the glare of the sun. It left no burn behind, but I could feel it, could still hear its quiet hum. I’ve become so accustomed to the smell of my own burnt flesh, I barely notice it anymore.

After the week in the hospital, I returned home. Chloe told me, in no uncertain terms, that she was leaving. I couldn’t find it within me to care. I took to sleeping during the day, keeping the curtains shut, protecting myself from the light. One night I woke up, and she was gone. I didn’t even notice her leave.

It didn’t take long for me to return to the labyrinth. I didn’t even need my map anymore, I could find my way all on my own, to the circular room at the maze’s heart.

It was empty. The mirror had disappeared. I need to find it again. Chloe won’t talk to me anymore. I thought someone should know where to find me if I disappear again.

**ARCHIVIST**

Statement ends.

It isn’t very often that we are sent statements from our sister organizations, and I still find it surprising that this one was given to us. The Usher Foundation did most of their own digging. Mr. Heartwood was indeed gone for ten days before they found him floating in the Los Angeles River. His girlfriend, Chloe Hudson, was the one to file the initial missing person’s report. When they found him, he had gone without water for over a week past humanly possible. 

As for the labyrinth, while I am aware of the prohibition-era tunnels that survive under downtown L.A., a structure of this size and architecture sounds… well quite ridiculous. More likely it is the work of an idle mind trying to find meaning. Nevertheless, researchers with the Usher Foundation were unable to find the entrance that Mr. Heartwood spoke of in his statement. The description of the mirror is interesting, yet even Mr. Heartwood himself admitted that he had not been receiving much sleep at the time.

Two weeks after giving his statement, Mr. Heartwood disappeared once more, supposedly to search for his mirror. Miss. Hudson once again filed a missing person’s report. After three days Mr. Heartwood was declared dead on November 23rd, 2013, though his body was never found. The speed in which this occurred is odd, but frankly not unheard of.

I asked Sasha to look into Miss. Hudson, but it seems she has descended into a similar type of madness that took her boyfriend. She has since dropped out of school, and now runs a blog, quite assured that Mr. Heartwood is somehow still alive. The posts on her blog chronicle several sightings of a tall man dressed in black that Miss. Hudson believes has been stalking her in the years since Mr. Heartwood’s passing. While the hospital records state that Mr. Heartwood was over 6 feet, I do not believe this to be conclusive enough to be evidence against his unfortunate death.

Sasha reached out several times to Miss. Hudson via her blog for a follow-up. She has not responded.

Recording ends.

[CLICK]

**Author's Note:**

> In the Venn Diagram of LABN fans and TMA fans there is exactly one (1) person in the centre and it is me.


End file.
